Question of the Day

Was Trump right to declare 'national emergency' for border wall?

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Rep. Luis Gutierrez D-Ill., third from left, along with other demonstrators protest outside of the U.S. Capitol in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and Temporary Protected Status (TPS), programs, during an rally on Capitol Hill in ... more >

Anyone who expects gratitude for a good deed displays only an ignorance of how humans tick. The best way to make an enemy is to do someone a good turn, which often creates not gratitude but resentment. This home truth was on display the other day when 200 ingrates and their enablers rallied on the steps of the Capitol to demand that Congress enact “Dream Act” legislation to protect “undocumented” would-be immigrants brought to this country by their parents, who broke the law to get them to these shores.

These protesters were hardly pleading to be rescued from a purgatory “in the shadows.” They were very much “in the open,” chanting and holding high their placards and signs demanding more special treatment. There’s more than a bit of chutzpah by someone in the country illegally to be “demanding” anything. The entitlement mentality, which originated here, is catching.

The rally on the Hill was the latest demonstration coordinated by “immigrant rights” groups. Ralliers pumped their fists and chanted denunciations of President Trump for his tough immigration policies, which have reduced illegal border crossings to the lowest in 45 years.

They’re trying to put pressure on Congress to find a way to preserve Barack Obama’s misbegotten Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order, which shielded them from deportation and enabled them to receive renewable two-year work permits.

Mr. Obama issued DACA in 2012 after repeated acknowledgments that he had no legal, much less constitutional, authority to do so. Mr. Trump had no choice but to rescind it, although he did give Congress until the work permits begin to expire to enact a replacement for DACA. A number of bills now before Congress would do that, enabling the young illegal immigrants to remain in the country and be within the law.

The “Dreamers” and their Democratic enablers, themselves dreaming of a wave of new voters committed to voting Democratic, demand that the Dream Act legislation be a “clean” bill, legislation free of provisions to strengthen border security. That should be a nonstarter. Mr. Trump and both Democrats and Republicans should not succumb to cynical tugging at heartstrings, with arguments such as that “after all, the Dreamers were brought here through no fault of their own.” Legislation must specifically prohibit granting of citizenship, if national sovereignty continues to mean anything.

America is an immigrant nation, and this is a source of national pride. But immigrant nations, like all others, have a right both legal and moral to establish their borders and say who can come in, and when, and how. Being an immigrant nation means we are all immigrants, and the attempt by some to be “more immigrant than thou,” deriding as bigot or racist anyone who wants law and order on the border to be fairly enforced, must be recognized for what it is, a cynical appeasement of ingrates at the expense of the millions of law-abiding immigrants who come here the honorable way.